Nothing is more durable than the dynasty of Doubt; for he reigns in the hearts of all his people, but gives satisfaction to none of them, and yet he is the only despot who can never die, while any of his subjects live.
There are three difficulties in authorship; to write any thing worth the publishing — to find honest men to publish it — and to get sensible men to read it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Authorship involves multiple challenges, including writing valuable content, finding trustworthy publishers, and capturing the attention of discerning readers.
In this quote, Charles Caleb Colton highlights the complex nature of authorship, emphasizing that creating a significant piece of writing is only the first hurdle. The subsequent challenges lie in locating honest and reliable publishers who will support the work and in ensuring that it reaches an audience of discerning individuals who can appreciate its value. This illustrates the multifaceted obstacles that authors face in the literary world.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech at a writers' workshop to inspire aspiring authors about the realities of publishing.
More from Charles Caleb Colton
All quotes →It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.
The benevolent have the advantage of the envious, even in this present life; for the envious man is tormented not only by all the ill that befalls himself, but by all the good that happens to another; whereas the benevolent man is the better prepared to bear his own calamities unruffled, from the complacency and serenity he has secured from contemplating the prosperity of all around him.
Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.
Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
Similar quotes
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.
Reduced... to a crude formula, the Russian tragedy is precisely the tragedy of a society in which literature turned out to be the prerogative of the minority.
You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book.
A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; The language plain, and incidents well link'd; Tell not as new what ev'ry body knows; and, new or old, still hasten to a close.
She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.